The Bottom LineExecutives dying for an ultraportable mouse to go with their Windows 8 or Android tablet will find a beautiful companion in the Wedge Touch Mouse, but it's a lot to pay for a pretty basic set of functions.

7.3 Overall

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If you believe what you read about Windows 8 and touch, the mouse will be dead in October. And yet, I'm here to tell you that that's premature...for now. Microsoft, in fact, is making its own set of touch mice in advance of Windows 8's formal launch. The smallest of them, the Microsoft Wedge Touch Mouse, doesn't aim to reinvent the PC's long-standing companion so much as to make it a lot smaller. You may be using a full-size touch pad with your Windows 8 desktop, but for tablets you might crave the opposite: a mouse to make that touch-controlled computer feel more like an old-fashioned desktop.

There's a reason why mice make more sense for Windows tablets than for full-fledged touch computers: some tablet keyboards, like the Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard, lack a touch pad. A mouse can substitute for that missing touch pad and provide needed navigation, in a way the iPad currently can't. On a portable tablet, adding a keyboard and mouse can transform your tiny device into a full-fledged workstation.

The "touch" in the Wedge Touch could seem misleading: this isn't a multitouch pad grafted onto a free-moving mouse. It's really just a design evolution of the touch mice Microsoft already has on the market. Touch, in this instance, is relegated to a few basic scroll functions. You can drag your finger against the mouse's angled matte top surface to scroll in four directions. That basic touch control is all you'll get in the Wedge Touch: no added multifinger gesture language as for the larger Microsoft Touch Mouse. Microsoft may or may not have additional gestural plans for the Wedge Touch mouse in the future, but right now it's a pretty basic affair.

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The rest of the Wedge Touch Mouse's mechanisms are standard: right and left click zones in the front have a pleasant tactile response and work even on the front edge. BlueTrack technology, used in other Microsoft mice, does an excellent job of tracking the Wedge Touch's movement on any surface, even glass. Finger scrolling works as well as advertised, too. The Wedge Touch Mouse has inertial scrolling that works intuitively based on how hard you flick, and it worked particularly well on a test PC here at CNET with Windows 8 RTM installed. The Wedge Touch works equally well with a Windows 7 laptop, and even a Mac (on the Mac, however, inertial scrolling felt less smooth than with Apple's own Magic Trackpad and mouse). Android users, the Wedge Touch will even work for you: on a test Acer Iconia Tab, the mouse and even its four-way scrolling worked fine (single-click only, though).

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The shape of the Wedge seems incredibly nonergonomic at first, but it makes sense once you use it. The thick end stays at the rear, while your fingers grip the metal sides. When holding it, my hand automatically assumed the position it would be in holding a regular mouse; the Wedge Touch just eliminates the extra bulk. My hand made a lot of surface contact with my desk, almost as much as the mouse itself. This could be completely uncomfortable for some people, and I have no idea what long-term use of such a small and strangely designed mouse would feel like, but I found it easy to adjust to.

Scott Stein is a senior editor covering iOS and laptop reviews, mobile computing, video games, and tech culture. He has previously written for both mainstream and technology enthusiast publications including Wired, Esquire.com, Men's Journal, and Maxim, and regularly appears on TV and radio talking tech trends.
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